MacArthur Road traffic signals seem to be headed in the wrong direction

Auxiliary traffic signals that face away from the direction of traffic,… (DAN HARTZELL, THE MORNING…)

September 22, 2013|Dan Hartzell | The Road Warrior

Q: I never noticed it before, but I'm sure this has been in place for years. Traveling north on MacArthur Road approaching the Lehigh Valley Mall entrance, there are three traffic lights facing motorists. One of those signals is positioned over the southbound lanes on the other side of the median barrier. Why is it necessary to have a light over the opposing lanes? This seems to be in the same category as the third brake light, or people leaving their outside lamps on during the day: a waste of energy, and with the traffic lights, a waste of material and maintenance. The two signals positioned properly over the northbound lanes are plenty visible without the need for a third light facing the wrong direction.

— Jim Altenbach, South Whitehall Township

A: Count me as a passenger in your vehicle regarding the effectiveness of the third brake light, Jim. They amount to an unnecessary, unwanted government requirement that I suspect was prompted by motorists' not knowing how to answer when asked by police why they rear-ended the car in front of them.

The real answer is, "I guess I just wasn't paying attention," but few drivers want to admit as much. So they come up with, "I didn't realize the guy ahead of me was stopping." The cop: "You didn't see his brake lights? They are working." The driver: "No. I didn't see the brake lights come on."

The solution: Add a brake light, of course.

Another, far more annoying and equally useless requirement, in the view through my windshield, is the audible back-up "beeper" warning for construction vehicles, garbage trucks and other commercial vehicles. They're supposed to prevent workers on foot from being struck, but I don't think they do much more than disturb the peace. Workers grow accustomed to the sound, which can be emitted almost continually by multiple vehicles on the same job site, in a matter of hours. The ostensible warning quickly becomes part of the unnoticed background noise. In short, a warning repeated too frequently amounts to no warning at all.

Alas, residents of the adjacent neighborhood never get used to the infernal beeping.

Turning off Pontification Road, I've also never noticed the traffic signal heads facing in the wrong direction on MacArthur Road at the mall-entrance intersection, Jim. You're right, it's been there for years.

While speculating on what they might be after confirming their existence — not that I doubted you, Jim, but like I said, I'd never noticed them, and I travel that section of road frequently — I wondered whether some traffic signals are "packaged together" in this manner by manufacturers, and that removing the wrong-way heads would simply add to the cost. I could conceive no other rationale for positioning lights in precisely the wrong direction, facing away from motorists. I wondered if it could be a mistake.

Not at all, according to PennDOT signals guru Tom Walter.

He said "auxiliary" signals such as this one are not standard models, but they're not all that rare, either. They're also posted at Allentown-area intersections including Tilghman Street and Cetronia Road, Cedar Crest Boulevard and Fish Hatchery Road and several others, and along the Route 222 Bypass, Walter said. The auxiliary signals for eastbound Tilghman traffic at Cetronia Road had never caught my eye, either, though I've lived a half-mile away for two decades and surely passed that way thousands of times.

I mustn't be a very observant guy, especially for a newspaper reporter. Or maybe the auxiliary signals are mostly a waste, as you contend, Jim.

Walter doesn't see it that way. Though they're positioned somewhat off to the left, the extra signals could help some motorists get the intended message more effectively, he said — especially during the red phase. Whenever the intersections were designed, engineers must have thought extra signal heads would be worthwhile.

Auxiliaries usually are installed at larger, complex intersections, and the mall access point (which technically is a four-way intersection; westbound motorists can pass straight across MacArthur from the mall into the Burger King restaurant property) clearly qualifies, if only for its high-torque traffic volume, sitting as it does between the Route 22 interchange to the south and the "golden strip" of shopping destinations to the north.

The northbound lanes approaching these signals also are subject to a great deal of weaving between lanes as traffic coming off 22 west merges with that on MacArthur north, with motorists heading in conflicting directions. The ongoing reconfiguration of the MacArthur interchange promises to improve that situation, but it will remain a daunting passage even when the job is completed (PennDOT says late this year, but the untrained eye appears to see more than 15 weeks' work remaining).